Watch These Floppy Drives Play a Famous Power Metal Song

It’s like a comeback tour for an artist that wasn’t a musician in the first place.

Some complain about the expanding role of technology in our lives. This time, it’s music to our ears.

In this video, a coordinated and synchronized orchestra of eight floppy disk drives plays “Through the Fire and Flames”—appropriately renamed “Through the Fire and Floppies”—by English metal band DragonForce.

The video was posted by the YouTube account Sammy1Am, whose page hosts an entire collection of floppy drive symphony videos, including a rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

To make the music, the programmer responsible uses a code he developed to make the floppy drive’s stepper motor—an electric motor that splits a continuous rotation into steps, allowing the drive to control the position of the read/write head of the disk—to operate at a specific frequency.

Who would have thought that a collection of some of history’s most obsolete electronic devices could be repurposed to create some bumping beats?

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.

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